Child of the Moon
by Asami Gamo
Summary: As she ran away, from her life, her past, her present, her future, she stumbled on to an old prophecy, and as she continued to dodge her own past, she searched for the answer to the questions she had lived with for all of her life. At last, she discovers a doorway into another reality, and once she passes through the door, she finds herself in an entirely new world. (Howl/OC)
1. Prologue: Past

**_"Lunae ortus, diligens sidera, solem alligavit."  
_** **As she ran away, from her life, her past, her present, her future, she stumbled on to an old prophecy, and as she continued to dodge her own past, she searched for the answer to the questions she had lived with for all of her life. At last, she discovers a doorway into another reality, and once she passes through the door, she finds herself in an entirely new world.**  
 **In this new world, she finds that she belongs - she is no longer a freak of nature as she was before, or tormented for that which she could not control about herself.**  
 **However, when she is named by a mysterious stranger who saves her from some cruel people, she finds herself involved in something that has gone on far longer than she has been in this world, and she will find herself trapped in a situation she never once wanted.**  
 **But she can no longer run away. Not anymore.**

 **Whoo! My first fanfiction on this website! I don't really have anything more to say about it; I'm sure you can gather most everything from the story itself.**

 **Warning(s): This is an OC-centric, AU fanfiction, and so there will be a lot of changes within canon. Also, the main pairing within the story is Howl/OC, and the secondary is Prince Justin/Sophie Hatter - so anyone who prefers Sophie/Howl will be sorely disappointed, I am sad to say. If you prefer Sophie/Howl and fanfictions straight with the canon with no deviations (who the Hell wants to read a fanfiction like that? It's called _fan_ fiction for a reason), you may want to click out of this fanfiction straight away. Also, Luna is a little screwed up in the head, so just remember that as you read this chapter; she does geet better, but this is just after she gets out of the place that broke her mind in the first place. So, yeah; she's _nuts_.**

 **Disclaimer: I, unfortunately, do not own _Howl's Moving Castle_ , nor can I claim to have come up with its majesty. All of the credit goes to Hayao Miyazaki (the genius), _Studio Ghibli_** **(the amazing), and Diana Wynne Jones (the brilliant).**

* * *

 ** _Child of the Moon_**

 **Prologue**  
 _ **Past**_

* * *

 _"It appears that you were wrong, **Induperator**!" she shouted to the sky above. "All those years in my past that you told me I was worth nothing to you, that I would never find someone who truly would want to help me! Well, look who's wrong **now**!"_

* * *

The scent of roses was the most prominent scent within the worn leather interior of his taxi.

He, the taxi driver and owner of the car, was nearly choking on the pungency of the scent; it was layered on so very thick on his latest passenger, his newest employer, he could almost taste it on this tongue - a saccharine, overwhelming taste, though there was a strange cloying undertone. But despite the overpowering tone of decay (bringing to the very forefront of his mind the image of a crimson rose, whose petals were unfurled and slowly blackening at the edges with decay), it was not an unpleasant sort of thing to be smelling.

He'd had worse customers than she, the strange woman absolutely _drowning_ in black furs piled on so thick he could not tell where one piece ended and another began, and some of those customers had smelt of stranger and worse things than the decaying rose scent she wore as perfume. But still, there was something about this scent that stuck into his mind as the clearest memory of she.

He let out a small cough as he nearly choked, having taken in a large enough gulp of air that was flavored by the decaying of a rose. He'd tried holding his breath to escape the cloying scent that tainted the inside of his taxi cab, but it had not worked out for him in the slightest.

"Apologies," the woman in his back seat said, and he started in surprise upon hearing her speak, nearly jerking the wheel to the side and swerving out of traffic.

Luckily, though, before things could get ugly, he managed to recover control of his vehicle and continued along his predetermined path.

The entire ride, his nameless passenger had not spoken a word - not even when he had asked of her her destination. She had merely handed him a small map of the city, with the old chapel on the outskirts of town circled in the crimson ink of a pen. Then she'd settled into the back-seat, hiding in her curtain of black furs.

He didn't understand why she chose not to speak, especially not when he actually heard her voice; the sound of it was rather pleasant, husky and sweet in its low sounds. It was also quite musical, reminding him somehow of the mystic melody of traditional Celtic music with its sweetness; overall, the sound of her voice was rather enchanting, mystical and ethereal - like the voice that an angel might speak with in the dreams of its beloved. He felt caressed, as if merely by speaking out loud, she'd touched him with gentle, soft hands.

There was also the lilt of an accent to her speech, but for the love of him, he could not quite place it; it was familiar, like he'd almost heard it within a dream, but it was also unfamiliar and new at the same time. The contradiction of both her voice and her accent confused him entirely, capturing his mind endlessly.

"What?" he mumbled, glancing at the rear-view mirror hanging in the front of his car in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the woman. He barely managed to restrain himself from gawking at her rudely, but it was a hard-pressed battle - hard fought and hard won.

He caught a glimpse of amused, pale blue eyes (almost white in the light shade that they were) before what he could at that moment realize was a large hat, made of the same fur as the rest of her ensemble, hide her face once more, throwing it into deep shadows.

"I am apologizing for the strength of my . . . _perfume_ ," she said, her strange accent coloring her every syllable. "It _can_ be rather unpleasant at times."

The woman sounded both amused and sheepish as she spoke, as if by coughing, he had reprimanded her harshly.

 _That's an understatement,_ he thought to himself, but he did not voice these thoughts out loud. Instead, he asked the question weighing on his mind the moment the words had come from her mouth. "Then why do you wear it?" he asked softly, curious, and she shifted slightly in the back-seat, allowing him to catch a glimpse of full lips, painted the crimson of a red rose; the ends, he could tell, naturally would turn upwards, but they had pulled down into an expression of deep unhappiness.

"Because I am running away," she murmured quietly, more to herself than him - as if that would explain everything. And then, realizing she had become visible once more, she ducked back into the shadows her hat provided for her.

He pondered her cryptic statement for a long while, and his cab devoured the miles between itself and the point where she would depart from his life - likely forever. He decided to try to garner more answers from her, but before he could question her further, the chapel she'd asked to be taken to slid into view on the horizon - towering and monumental.

It was an old church - that much he could tell. If he had to guess at its builder, he would say either the Romans, or someone who was inspired by their architecture; it looked fairly Roman-esque when it came to its appearance: tall, white columns of stone, from the tops of which sprung gracefully curving arches; the arches, emblazoned with the look of marble (though cracked and worn down by time's ever reaching hands) with veins of glinting gold and shimmering silver, supported the roof - a triangular shape that seemed to scrape the sky and flake off pieces of the clouds; and there were towers, too - tall, graceful things with windows that looked as though they had once been quite beautiful and majestic.

The church was entirely beautiful, but it had obviously been left abandoned (and he'd heard rumors that even church-goers refused to go near the place for some reason he didn't bother to stick around long enough to hear); there were visible cracks in the marble stone of the architecture and flakes of it would be peeled away by a stiff gust of wind, carried out towards the violet, ice-capped mountains that left them in a low valley of lush beauty.

There was tall, wrought-iron, covered in the reddish-orange tint of rust, fencing around the perimeter of the church, beginning at the wide staircase of marble leading upwards to the double-doors of the church - which were in pristine condition. The wood of the double-doors looked like oak, except for the crimson tint to the glossy wood, and he'd never quite seen a finish like that on any oak wood - no matter how hard the wood-worker tried. Even the knockers on the doors, looking as though they'd been made of solid gold, were in entirely perfect condition. Truly, the entirety of the double doors looked as though they'd been made only a few days ago and installed yesterday - maybe even that morning.

But that was impossible, he knew, because the gate of the iron-wrought fence was padlocked shut, and the entire ensemble was rusted over so much he doubted anyone with a key could get the key into the hole - if there was even anyone _with_ a key.

As the taxi cab crept closer to the church, he caught sight of words carved into the marble archway above the double doors. It read, in a language he'd only ever seen before in school and didn't truly understand: _"Si electus per portas istas transiit ad aliam Tellurem ibunt."_

His brows knitted, then; if he'd had any other passenger in his taxi, he would have disregarded the words carved upon the archway of the church as nothing more than some trivial decoration, but she . . . she made him curious. He knew she was no ordinary person, and that she wanted to go to this particular church, with those particular words carved over its doors, well, that had to mean something. Right?

"It's an old prophecy," she said as way of explanation, as if reading his mind and gleaning questions from his thoughts, and, to his surprise, she took off the hat that hid her from view.

She was surprisingly beautiful - and quite young (he guessed her age to be about 14 or 15) - with a radiant complexion of ivory, a smattering of rose-like coloring over her high cheekbones. Her eyes, the irises a pale, pale blue - like the blue of ice, were like stars - burning coldly, framed by pale lashes that looked as though they had been frosted over. Her hair, strewn over her shoulders in a gently waving curtain of well-cared for strands, was the color of snow, pale and nearly sparkling - the way that snow is oft to do in the light of the sun. She had a small, button nose, and full lips, painted the color of the petals of a crimson rose in bloom.

As she continued to speak, with the voice of someone who has seen far too much and has already passed their judgment upon the world, she combed her fingers through the waving curls splayed over her slender shoulders; he caught a glimpse of a long and narrow, silvery scar across the middle of her throat, as if someone had tried to slit her throat, as she moved her hair through her long, slender fingers, but before he could examine the strange scar further, it was again hidden by her thick curls of pale white.

"It was told by an old, High Priestess of Janus* - the Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, doorways, passages, and endings - several centuries ago, in the height of Rome's glory. She desired to see the future of her people, the future of Rome, by calling upon the spirit of the goddess, Antevorta, of the future; she meditated, then, for three days and three nights, to accomplish this feat," she explained. "It is said that upon the third night, when the time reached midnight, she awoke from her meditation with a prophecy and a vision of the future. She spouted the prophecy that is written upon the archway of that church - her temple, actually - before her heart gave out and she died." She shrugged, then, as if the thought of someone dying meant nothing to her. "She burnt herself out trying to call upon the spirit of Antevorta and see the future of Rome. She failed, of course, and instead gave a prophecy that promised to never come true in Rome's lifetime. Disgraceful."

He scowled at her. "She was trying to take care of her people!" he could not help but snap at her, her utter nonchalance about the story and her condemning the High Priestess for her failure aggravating him beyond belief. "She wanted to make sure that the ones that she cared about would remain safe! I don't think that that is truly disgraceful!"

She blinked, as if surprised, and she smiled liplessly. "I suppose you wouldn't," she said, her voice colored by scorn.

He gritted his teeth, and her pale blue eyes flicked to the chapel.

"No doubt, the words inscribed on to the marble of the archway are not the exact words the High Priestess spouted before she died, and it's very likely that everything she said is not there. The architects likely left out a few words or such, either to save space or simply because they did not know the entirety of what she said." She shrugged again, and he caught another glimpse of the silvery scar across her throat. "Even so, the meaning is clear enough."

Before he could ask more on the topic, or shout at her again for her rude treatment of the deceased, she leaned forwards in her seat.

"Stop here," she murmured, leaning for balance on both his seat and the one next to him.

He did as she asked, bewildered into forgetting his anger with her. "Why?" he asked as his beloved car coasted to a smooth stop.

"Only the Chosen One the prophecy refers to" - she pointed, then, at a certain grouping of words on the archway before them - "is able to pass through the gates," she answered, and as he turned around to peer at her, he caught sight of true fear on her face. "If anyone unworthy, anyone else, attempts to answer, they will meet with one of two fates: at best, they will find themselves the victim of a simple and essentially harmless misdirection spell - they'd find themselves going in exactly the opposite direction that they once were going, with no recollection of why they were there."

"And at worst?" he prompted, and he watched as her eyes flashed with truest terror.

"At worst . . ." She gulped audibly, the sound low and hollow. "At worst, the unworthy trespasser with be incinerated; nothing of them will be left but ashes, easily blown away on the barest of breezes - all for the simple sin of encroaching upon holy ground." She laughed, then, but the sound was obviously forced and joyless. "But that rarely ever happens - it takes much too much energy to accomplish. Most often, it's the misdirection spell."

She grew serious again. "But every once in a while, as if to make an example of those who would wish wrong of the church, the trespasser would find themselves melting away into nothing - leaving only the barest hints of ash and the echo of the agonizing screams behind to mark their passing."

Before he could comment, likely to scold her for undertaking such a risky venture - especially at her young age (since she had so many years left before she should even _think_ about death, let alone have that judgmental look in her eye and cynical tone in her voice), she let out what sounded like it must have been an expletive, except it was not in any sort of language he'd ever heard before.

"I've said too much," he heard her mutter beneath her breath, the sound of her voice far more husky in her quietness. "And they will discover my absence soon enough. And then . . ."

She trailed off, shaking her head from side to side. "I've put you in danger," she said, looking up at him and meeting his gaze with her apologetic, icy blue eyes. "I am so very sorry - both for the danger I've put you in, and what I am about to do in order to protect you."

She reached up, and he watched, stunned, as she brushed her fingertips along the raised skin of the jagged scar across her throat, revealing it to him in its ugly, silvery entirety.

"What are you talking about?" he asked her in a low, quiet voice to match her frightened whisper. "How have you put me in danger? And is there any way I can help you?"

The question was sincere; he wanted to help her in any way he could - return the smile to her face, return the twinkle to her eyes, return the light to her voice.

But she laughed a short, cold bark of cynical laughter. "You want to help me?" she asked, and when he nodded, stunned at her sudden change in behavior, she roared with humorless laughter. "At last . . . someone wants to help me after all these years!"

She shook her head, her body trembling with the cold laughter that she let tumble from her lips, laughter that left him trembling with chills. "At last, someone wants to help me, when I have given up! Oh, what irony is this!"

She tipped her head back, as if to stare at the sky, and her laughter slowed. "It appears that you were wrong, _Induperator_!" she shouted to the sky above. "All those years in my past that you told me I was worth nothing to you, that I would never find someone who truly would want to help me! Well, look who's wrong _now_!"

The cold mirth faded from her eyes, and she sagged against the seat, exhausted. Tear slipped down her cheeks.

"I'm right," she kept murmuring beneath her breath. "I'm finally right. I _beat_ you."

He reached out to touch her shoulder, feeling that it was his obligation to try to comfort the poor, little mad child in his back-seat, but the moment that he touched her, she sprang back up, all evidence of her mental breakdown wiped away - erased.

She smiled joylessly at him. "Thank you . . ." she said, as if nothing had happened. "Thank you for everything."

Before he could so much as attempt to question her about her mumblings, about her mental breakdown, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his cheek in a platonic display of gratitude.

His mind blanked, then, wiped clean, and he could think of nothing.

She pressed a thick wad of bills, hurriedly, into his hands. "Take this and drive away from here, quickly," she instructed him, her words falling from her lips he'd later say they reminded him of the beats of a hummingbird's wings. "Drive far away from this place and forget any of this ever happened. Retire from the cabbie business, settle down, get a new life for yourself."

She took a deep breath, as if to calm herself, but it was shaky and she still trembled.

"I am sorry," she repeated as she slid out of the car and walked out of his life forever.

He started the car back up and made a wide U-turn, starting back to town. He watched, though, in his rear-view mirror, as the young girl with wavy hair the color of freshly-fallen snow walked up to the gate.

She reached for the rusted-over padlock holding the gate closed, and it glowed the orange-red of fire for a moment. She flinched in surprise and recoiled, snapping her hand away from the lock as it all but exploded, clattering against the ground. The chains that had been held in place by the padlock melted away into nothingness, disappearing, and the gate creaked open of its own accord.

After a moment of hesitation, the girl steeled herself, and her nerves, and she passed through the gates and on to the land of the church.

For some reason that he could not explain, he felt a pang of fear for the beautiful, wraith-like girl, but he simply didn't understand why; he didn't know her - she was just another stranger he'd passed in his long life. But despite not knowing her, he still felt fearful for she, who looked as though she was made of moonlight, as she climbed the marble staircase.

She arrived at the double-doors that served as an entrance to the church, and she pushed them open, passing through them and into darkness.

As she disappeared into the opaque black, pieces of himself seemed to leave with her, and as the doors slammed shut behind her, so did they shut upon his memories of having ever met her.

And thus, their paths did part.

* * *

 ***I couldn't tell you whether Janus had priests or priestess, or whether he had them at all, but this is fiction and so there will be divergences from the real world.**

 **And that's the end of the Prologue! What did you guys think?**

 **I know the language is a bit . . . outdated, but it is what Luna was taught to speak with so the story will be told in mostly that style of writing. (Long road ahead; I'm gonna need more coffee.)**

 **Feel free to let me know what you think of the story so far, what you think should happen, and what you think I would change. Also, feel free to answer the question of the chapter in the comments whenever you feel like it.**

 **Question of the Chapter: Which minor character in _Howl's Moving Castle_ (AKA: not Sophie or Howl) was your favorite?**

 **Ciao!**


	2. Chapter 1: Fear

**HowlxSophie: Agreed. I absolutely adore those two; they're so funny together. And thank you for the compliments! I'm glad you're enjoying the story! And I totally agree; Sophie is _really_ , just kind of plain. She's an interesting enough character, but she's just kind of plain and not very beautiful. I'm glad, though, that you support my decision to make Luna beautiful. Most people get annoyed when the OC is undeniably beautiful; they generally call them Mary-Sues at that point.**

* * *

 _ **Child of the Moon**_

 **Chapter 1  
** ** _Fear_**

* * *

 _"But, to be quite honest, I'm afraid, Sophie."_

* * *

 _She's falling . . . falling . . . falling, down a dark, dark, dark hole. Falling . . . falling . . . falling . . ._

 _Thud!_

She's awoken by the pain between her shoulder blades, spreading down her spine to gather, like raindrops on the point of a leaf, drawn downwards by the inevitable force of gravity, in her ribs.

She's sprawled out on the oak-wood paneling floor; her legs, lithe and muscular, are tangled in the ivory cotton of her bed-sheets, her arms on either side of her head at awkward angles – not that she notices for a single moment.

She stares, dazed, at the ceiling.

 _It_ _ **is**_ _a rather nice ceiling,_ she thinks to herself, feeling, quite honestly, a bit silly. _Nice design._

And it is of rather high quality, but she didn't quite remember that bit – only that it looks nice.

It's made of the same oak as the floor, polished until it shines the gold of honey in the sun, and it comes into a high point, forming an equilateral triangle – if one were to disregard the way that the final piece is missing. It is, after all, supported by the walls, also made of the same wood (except there is a glossy sheen of pale blue paint layered over them), and they prevent the triangle of the roof from completing itself, prevent that final piece meeting the other two.

 _It reminds me, a bit, of my room . . . in . . . the hat shop? Is that the one?_ she wonders, struggling to put the pieces of her foggy mind back together, and she flinches as the door, belonging to the room she's currently only half aware of herself within, slams open.

It clips the wall next to it, creating a resonating sound that jars her, almost bringing her into awareness; her mind swims so that it rests just below the surface of the fog that envelopes it, but, even as she struggles to bring it above the clinging fog, it slips back down, into the depths of the dim mist.

She, slowly, turns her head to the side, feeling her hair – the color of its wavy strands the color of spider lillies, crimson and beautifully vivid – slide smoothly across her exposed skin with the movements, and her eyes, such a pale blue that they are almost white, land upon a brunette standing in the doorway, her chest heaving with exertion as the adrenaline fades.

 _Sophie is_ _ **really**_ _pretty,_ she decides firmly, punctuating the statement with a mental nod – as she is not quite in tune with her body enough to make many movements for real; the turn of her head took most of her energy, and she can't quite muster up more than a few, scarce drops left in order to examine her friend closely.

She, Sophie Hatter, is truly pretty – beautiful, even; she has a subtle sort of beauty that befits a true Queen: her complexion is clear of blemishes, the color of cream with a dusting of rose over her high, slender cheeks. She is tall, willowy, and graceful whenever she walks, and her body is well-proportioned in every way, shape, and form. Her face, heart-shaped and doll-like in its elegance, has both the capacity to be hard and harsh, like a slate of jagged stone, or soft and sweet, gentle like the face of a new mother holding her newborn for the very first time. Her eyes, large and framed by thick, dark lashes, are the color of melted milk chocolate, with the capacity, too, to be both cruel and kind, and her hair, always pulled back in a neat plait that brushes against her mid-back at its very longest, is only a few shades darker than her eyes – the color of the bark of a healthy spruce tree, with a few strands of golden blonde interwoven in. But the golden color is only visible within the light of the sun.

"You're okay," Sophie breathes, sagging against the framework of the door. "You must have just fallen out of the bed in your sleep again."

She only blinks at the guest in the doorway, her dear friend, and Sophie chuckles quietly.

"Not awake yet?"

Sophie grins, then, a dancing light of mischief evident in her warm brown eyes.

"Well, to solve that, I _could_ always call for Bettie."

Something within her twinges at the thought of the brunette calling for the aforementioned woman, current manager of the hat shop while Sophie's mother is away (part of her wonders at her sudden ability to remember things), and she muses upon the feeling of . . . _fear_?

 _Well, whatever feeling it is, it is a most disconcerning one,_ she thinks, and without realizing it, the corners of her full mouth tilt downwards into a deep frown. _I do not believe that I enjoy it. And besides, what could the woman have ever done to me – this Bettie, manager of the hat shop?_

Sophie is about to shout for the woman when, after much struggling, her mind finally clicks into place; she recalls that which she has forgotten, that which has slipped from her immediate thoughts. And she remembers exactly why she fears the manager of the hat shop.

In one smooth movement, she flings herself up, off of the rigidness of the floor (barely made more comfortable by the entanglement of herself within the bedsheets), and, ignoring the way that her legs remain hopelessly tangled up in her blankets, crosses the entire room within the course of a mere second. She claps her hand over her friend's mouth, and the slender, long index finger of her other hand comes to rest against her lips in the universal sign of silence.

"I'm awake now," she assures the brunette, allowing her finger to slip from against her lips, soft as the satin-like petals of a rose, and her friend nods, with wide, sarcastic eyes, and rips the obstruction off from over her mouth.

"I gathered," Sophie remarks blandly, gesturing at she, with hair like the color of fire and eyes like the color of ice.

She understands what the brunette is saying to her, without words, about her using magic to cross the room in an instant, in one simple step, and she laughs nervously. "Yeah, about that . . ." Her voice trails off, and she rubs the back of her neck with a sheepish expression on her face.

When she sees Sophie giving her a meaningful, scolding look, she coughs out an awkward apology and goes silent soon after, only breaking it to give a half-hearted explanation:

"I didn't want water dumped on me again."

She smiles nervously, waiting for Sophie's respnose.

"I noticed," Sophie says simply, giving no reprimand to her friend, then the brunette turns her around to face the dresser on the wall opposite them. "Now go get dressed; we have to work."

* * *

"The same dream _again_?" Sophie asks, her eyes wide as she looks away from the dark red sun-hat she's stitching decorations on to – instead looking solely at she, with the eyes of ice.

"Yeah."

The reply is short and distracted, as she sews a large, crimson rose – still blooming – on to the brim of the blue silk fedora she's holding. (From her position next to the daydreaming red-head, Sophie can catch occasional whiffs of the perfumed fragrance of the rose – something that her dear friend has worked upon religiously until she perfected it.)

Sophie sighs, disappointed, and she sets her current project down on to the table in front of the two of them, ready to give her friend a piece of her mind. However, before she can open her mouth, one of the other workers of the hat shop walks by, pausing in the doorway and beaming at its two occupants. (Both look at her in one smooth movement, timed so perfectly one would almost believe they were the same person – merely split into two.)

"Hey, Luna. Hi, Sophie."

"Hi," the both of the girls say in unison to the girl, and, satisfied at having been acknowledged, the girl walks away to finish her work – ready to leave for the day. (It is already the afternoon, and the shop will close soon, in less than ten minutes.)

Sophie turns her attention to her friend, then. "Luna," she says, settling the aforementioned girl with a look, "how many times now have you had that dream?"

Luna grimaces, and Sophie mentally curses herself for trying to push her friend into giving more information about herself (she had, after all, warned the entire Hatter family when they offered her room and board in exchange for her work at the shop, that she would not, under any circumstances, disclose any information about her past; she said that she'd rather leave that behind her, far behind her, and they all agreed. Of course, Mother had been curious, but she was so very firm she had no choice but to agree).

The eldest daughter of the Hatter family is about to apologize when Luna shakes her head, waving curls of bright red hair flying out about her face.

"You don't have to apologize," she says, in a soft and gentle voice that makes Sophie think, idly, of the musical quality the wind takes on as it blows over a field of flowers. "I know you don't mean to push; you're merely concerned."

Luna sighs deeply, and Sophie places her hand upon her friend's slender shoulder.

"You don't have to tell me, you know," she says. "You said it yourself – you'd rather not allow many people to know much about you."

(It was another stipulation of the red-head's: she had a good many secrets, and many of them were varying shades of 'not-good'. As such, she refused to share them – and her dreams have always been one of those secrets.)

Luna shakes her head again, and she fixes her friend with a sincere look, pinning her in place with her enchanting, silvery blue eyes. "I _should_ tell you; I _want_ to tell you," she says, but she sighs and rests her head in her hands. "But, to be quite honest, I'm afraid, Sophie."

The brunette's slender brows draw together. "Why are you afraid?" she asks, bewildered. "What could possibly make you afraid?"

Luna smiles wryly. "I know that you think I am powerful enough to fight off anything that may frighten may, but there are some things that no one can escape – not even me. I am not the all-powerful being you think that I am," she says, looking away and freeing Sophie from the enchantment of her unnatural eyes. "Many things frighten me, and I can do nothing more about them than you can about your own frights."

"What are you afraid of?" Sophie asks, placing her hand upon her friend's shoulder gently. "I'll help you with whatever you're afraid of; you don't have to be alone any longer."

Luna's smile slips away, and she glances at her friend from beneath her lashes, again pinning her in place. "Sophie . . ."

The whisper is almost silent, but the brunette hears it well enough – and smiles.

"I _want_ to help you, Luna," she says sincerely. "I _want_ to be someone you can count on, someone you can rely on to help you shoulder your burden. Please trust me."

A silvery tear traces its way down the elfin cheekbones of the crimson haired girl, and she hugs Sophie tightly.

"Thank you," she murmurs against her friend's neck, and Sophie nods in response, smiling gently and embracing the silently crying red-head.

After a moment, Luna pulls away from the embrace, and, sniffling, she wipes her tears away. "I'll tell you," she says, giving the brunette a watery smile, "but only about the dream."

Sophie nods and settles herself back into her seat, preparing herself for a story.

* * *

 _I'm falling in my dream. Always falling, falling down a dark hole._

 _I can't see the edges of the hole, and I can't see the top, nor the bottom – the only thing I can see is the darkness. It's all around me, and it feels as though, as I fall, it may devour me whole._

 _I attempt to latch on to the walls, stop my rapid descent, but I find nothing; there is nothing in this bottomless abyss but myself and the darkness – and it continues to threaten to devour me, turn me into nothing but a shadow of my former self._

 _I spot a hint of light below me – a twinkling, star-like thing. It inspires hope within me, but I am coming up on it too fast._

 _What once gave me hope now frightens me, and I wonder what will happen when I come into contact with the shining light – will I burn up? Will I explode into tiny pieces? Or will I just disappear, leaving no trace of my existence behind?_

 _I am just about to crash into the light when I fall out of bed and wake up._

* * *

Sophie gapes at Luna. "That's awful!" she exclaims, her warm brown eyes wide. "No wonder you always fall out of bed and have such a hard time waking up." She sighs and sinks back into her seat. "I don't know how you handle that dream, especially since it keeps repeating itself; I'd never be able to do what you can."

Luna smiles gently. "I can only handle it because I know the end," she says cryptically, her eyes dancing, before she returns to stitching the blooming rose on to the fedora.

Sophie shakes her head, bewildered, but she did not bother to question her friend more; she knows she will receive no answers.

* * *

 **And that's the end of that! Hope you enjoyed!**

 **Answer: My favorite minor character has to be Calcifer. He's so sarcastic and sassy; he's very entertaining to watch - and even to listen to. And I love how he cares even though he pretends not to. I just pretty much _adore_ his character.**

 **Question of the chapter: If you were trapped in a room and the only way to get out was to choose either Howl or Markl would survive and leave with you, who would you choose?**

 **Gotta go now! Ciao!**


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